


we wear our hearts on sleeves (for once)

by Way_Out_There



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 7th year, Mostly friendship, Multi, Some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 10:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8324365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Way_Out_There/pseuds/Way_Out_There
Summary: As the end of the year draws close, the seventh-year Gryffindor girls play the childish Muggle game of their past.





	

It wasn’t until early April that the truth set in. They were all leaving Hogwarts soon. Gone would be the homework and the tests, the teachers and the castle, the people that they passed by every day but never really talked to, the childish irresponsibility that came with the knowledge that all of their bumps and bruises could be fixed by a wave of the wand. In its place was fear for the future, confusion over what to do. Terror that they’d never tie up the loose ends. Want to go back in time, for a few of them. 

Lily Evans awoke that night to the sound of her roommate Noranda crying. Lily pulled open her curtains slightly, catching the sight of Alice, across from Noranda, doing the same. Alice looked at her, exasperated. Emmeline, too, was a light sleeper, and soon their whole dormitory would be awake. 

“Noranda,” Alice whispered. Then louder. “Noranda.” 

Noranda gave a few sniffs before pushing herself up. “W-What?” The word was too loud for the dead of night. Lily took a moment to wonder what time it was. 

“Stop crying,” Alice ordered. Lily internally winced at how brusque her friend was being. 

“I think that you’re the reason we’re awake,” Annika, the fifth member of their room, said. 

“I think you all need to shut up,” said Emmeline. 

Alice shrugged. “We don’t have classes tomorrow.”

“Is that why you’re stealing my sleep?” Emmeline asked. “Shut up. Seriously.”

Lily heard shifting from the bed next to hers and realized that Annika was moving around. “It’s already three in the morning,” Annika said. “I don’t think I can go back to sleep, anyway.” The blonde girl came into Lily’s view, wearing pyjama pants and an oversized shirt and sitting on Noranda’s bed. 

“What do you mean?!” Emmeline demanded. “That’s hours more of sleep!” 

“Don’t you want to help your friend?” Alice asked. 

Sensing an argument about to rise between the two girls, Lily stepped in. “I think that there’s time to sleep, but we’re ignoring the issue here. Noranda, are you okay?” 

“Just go to sleep,” Noranda muttered. 

“You’re crying, darling,” Alice told her. “It’s mildly distracting.” 

“I…” Noranda trailed off. 

Emmeline groaned. 

“What’s wrong?” Annika asked. 

“Nothing,” Noranda said. 

“Bull—”

“Shut up, Alice!” 

“Noranda, you can tell us,” Lily coaxed. 

“Everything’s wrong!” Noranda blurted out. “We’re leaving and I have no idea what I’m doing with my life or if I’m staying in England, I can’t pass the N.E.W.T.s, I just know it, and now everyone’s awake and we’re one day closer to it all being over! Why aren’t you worrying?” 

Her words were met with silence. Finally, Emmeline groaned. “I’m not going back to sleep now. Thanks a lot, Noranda.” 

Annika sighed. 

“We’ll sleep in tomorrow,” Alice said. “Noranda, we can help you, you know. Or, Lily can help you. In the meantime, we have a party.” 

“No,” Lily said. 

“Yes,” Alice countered, glaring. “We’re far too tightly wound. I’m going to have a breakdown if we don’t do something fun soon.” 

“We can’t have a party,” Emmeline said. “We don’t have anything that we need for a party.” 

“I know for a fact that you have beers hidden under your bed,” Alice said. “And who says that we need food or decorations? All we need is each other. And the beer.” 

**I. Lily Evans—Head Girl**

They’ve all had far too much to drink, even Lily, but Lily is trying to keep herself mostly sober for the sake of her all-too-drunk friends so that they don’t go too crazy and jump out the window or something. 

“Lils!” Alice calls, and Lily worries that someone will hear them, because Alice is nothing if not a loud drunk. “We’re playing Two Truths and a Lie!” 

“Wonderful.” 

“You’re going first!” 

Lily can think of a million objections, from the fact that they know each other too well to really play this game to how childish it is but oh what’s the harm and then she’s talking. “I...love...James...Potter,” Lily says, because she’s decisive but at the same time shy of her feelings because she’s Lily. 

And of course there’s a catcall from Alice. “Yeah you do!” she exclaims. “You’re getting married soon! We can have a double wedding...you and James, me and Frank...and he can take my last name and you can take his! Yeah!” 

“You haven’t heard the rest,” says Lily. “I love my sister.” 

And then Alice. “Rose? Iris?” 

“Petunia,” corrects Emmeline. 

“And I love Hogwarts.” 

Silence from the room. “That’s hard,” says Annika. 

“Obviously it’s the middle one,” Noranda claims. When she gets the looks from the rest of the room, she continues. “What? She loves James and she loves Hogwarts. I’m not saying that I like it, but the middle one has to be wrong.” 

Lily loves James in a way that she never even thought existed, even when she was a little girl and listening to the Muggle fairy tales. James was awful and cruel and rude and she hated him for so long, but something changed with him, and then he was kind and handsome and smart and polite and Lily knows how lucky she is to have him. It’s her own little fairy tale, really. Of course. 

Lily knows that she will leave Hogwarts and get a good job as a Healer or in the Ministry or as a teacher, maybe at Hogwarts, and she knows that she will marry James soon and stay in touch with her friends and be a good mother and a good worker and a good friend and a good wife because what other paths could her life take? Her friends would kill for a future like hers. Everything is planned out for her. Everything has fallen into place. So why does she feel so sad? 

(Maybe because she loves Petunia too, loves Mummy and Daddy so much that it hurts sometimes when she knows that she will never be a part of their world and that Tuney was right, she is a freak, a freak, and she will never escape from what the magical world has given her to live out but god she just wants to write a letter to Tuney and hear I love you Lily one last time from her big sister.)

So the third one is the lie. She doesn’t love Hogwarts. She reveres it. Respects it. Adores it. But Lily just cannot muster up any places in her heart for the magical school. 

She knows it. Cares for it. Wants to remain inside its comforting walls. But it took the nice Muggle life from her and now she doesn’t know how to move on when there’s no family to live with or visit on the quiet weekends from her job as a lawyer or doctor. 

But Lily can’t manage to open her mouth and tell her friends the truth. 

**II. Alice Longbottom—IQ 147**

Alice is an only child and maybe that’s why she doesn’t bother to press Lily on the subject of her sister. She’s watched Lily send the letters home and she’s read the headings on the ones that return by the school owls. Mother. Father. Never Petunia. 

Alice takes another drink of the beer and the buzz has worn off and now it’s just warm comfort for her, even though she knows that she’ll probably write an essay tonight for History of Magic and not realize that it’s all insults and foul words until she reads it to Professor Binns. It’s her turn. “Let me see, darlings,” she says, because she’s friendly and she’s brash and sarcastic because she’s Alice. “I don’t want to leave Hogwarts.” 

“Truth!” Emmeline calls, and all of Alice’s theories that she doesn’t particularly care for the dark-haired girl because they’re too similar are only reenforced. “I mean, we all don’t wanna leave. Don’t wanna…”

Alice takes the attention off of Emmy before she really embarasses herself. “I want to be an Auror,” she says, and really it’s just too easy because she’s made that clear to everyone ever since Career Advice two years ago. Finishing up, Alice goes with, “I think that Divination is a bunch of drivel.”  
It’s now gotten hard, and Alice knows it. “The first one,” Annika says quietly, shyly. “We’ll all miss it. But I think that you’re ready for your life to start.” 

For a moment there, Alice almost regrets not taking Annika seriously throughout most of her Hogwarts life, because that one comment makes Alice believe that Annika Fowler might not be a shy idiot like she seems in every class. Alice loves Lily and she cares about all of her veritable roommates, but she prefers Frank and the girls from Ravenclaw with their dark sense of humor and their intelligent insights and the ambitious Slytherins and Annika really is too much of a ‘Puff anyway. Alice ignored her in all of their shared classes, and Annika never really spoke up or approached her, but really, maybe the blonde isn’t that bad. 

Still, any logic that may or may not be sending Alice into an identity crisis doesn’t make her any more scared to tell the girl that she’s wrong. “Nope. You can get out of here all that you want but once Hogwarts is over, all the fun? Gone. I’m not going to spend any more time making out with random people behind statues or sneaking out after dark just because I can, and there’s still so much to learn, and there’s so many things that are just going to be over once we’re out of this old castle.” 

Alice looks directly at Lily as she says this, trying to get the Head Girl to give a scandalized expression, but the girl keeps on looking at her bottle. Alice drinks again. 

(The look that Annika is giving her makes Alice wonder if she heard Alice’s mutterings in the night, the ones about killing the bastards that murdered her mother and Alice wonders if Annika realizes how scared she is about her revenge mission, about dying herself.)

“How many people have you made out with? You’re dating Frank,” Emmeline says. 

“Oh, loads of people,” Alice replies. “Frank doesn’t mind. He does it too. We love each other, and that’s all that matters.” 

“Are you serious?” 

“Jealous?” Alice shoots at Emmeline. “What, have you been harboring a crush on me?” 

“Shut up, Longbottom.”

“You don’t think that Divination is that bad,” Noranda interrupts. “You’ve told me a few things about how you’ve had Visions, and we’ve studied real Prophets and learned about that...you know that Divination is for real, Al.” 

“Don’t call me Al,” Alice says, because that’s just for her father, and continues on to knock Randa’s assumption out of the park because there’s nothing that Alice likes more than crushing dreams other than being blunt, and when you put them together and add some alcohol, there’s nothing that can go wrong. “And I don’t think that Prophecy is a sham. It’s...what do you call it, Noranda? Legit? Yeah, legit. It’s the class that I take issue with. No matter who tries to teach it, it comes off as complete bull. So that’s a truth.” 

She gives her poor, low-tolerance roommates a few moments to realize the lie. “You don’t want to be an Auror?” Lily asks, acting surprised. 

Alice shrugs, because she doesn’t know herself. 

“You shouldn’t do it if you don’t want to,” Lily says. “You deserve happiness in life. If being an Auror isn’t—hic—going to give that to you, than you can’t do it.” Her green eyes are wide and there’s something in them that Alice can’t place and therefore hates. “Don’t throw away your life, Alice. We love you too much for that.”  
Alice shrugs, because it might not be her dream but Frank is, little Frankie Lorrigander who wants to be an Auror and wants her by his side, who she’s going to marry, and her dream is killing murderers and making the world safe and whatever the means, she needs to get there. 

Nothing else seemed particularly attractive, anyway. 

**III. Annika Fowler—Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes**

Annika was five when he had his older brother Oscar cut his hair off and ran around outside, shirtless. His mother dragged him in. “You are a Fowler girl,” she hissed. “You do not humiliate yourself like this.” 

Annika was nine when he went to his first dance at primary school with his good friends Edward Thom and Myra Green. He loved his dress. He grinned up at Edward. But with everyone that called him a ‘pretty little girl’ or told him ‘you’ll be a lovely woman someday,’ he only felt sicker and sicker. 

Annika was 13 when he realized that he was a boy. 

Annika hasn’t told anyone yet. 

But the beer has done a number on his mind, and somehow it seems like a good idea to tell his friends in a childish guessing game. “I am a girl. I believe in God. I want to be an artist.” The words come out in a rush. And then Alice is looking at him with a profoundly un-Alice-like look, and Annika worries about what he has done, because he’s worried and shy and just wants people who he can be sure will accept him because he’s Annika. 

“You don’t believe in anything,” Emmeline claims, “capital-G or otherwise.” 

“Why not?” Noranda objects. Annika doesn’t think that Noranda actually has much spiritual stake in the argument, but the girl is tired and she and Emmeline have never loved each other. 

“Because we’re wizards! We have magic!” 

“And that gets rid of God?” 

“Girls, shut up,” Lily says, rubbing her head. “This argument is just going to make everyone mad, and we don’t need that now.” Annika, at least, is feeling tired. He understands what Lily means. He was raised by good Christian parents and constantly got into fights with kids at school about whether there was a Him and what His nature was.

(A comforting presence, benevolent, despite all of the stories of Him killing because He was angered for some reason or another, but Annika believes that even God can learn from His mistakes and that God would be glad to because God strives for perfection, especially in man, but understands how hard it is to find.)

“You want to be an artist,” Alice says. “You’ve made that obvious.”

“You paint things over holiday and hide them under your bed,” Lily says, and Annika blushes because he didn’t realize how bad he was at this whole stealth thing. His father wants him to be a teacher or another more normal profession. His parents weren’t fully convinces that Hogwarts wasn’t witchcraft—well, it is, but not bad witchcraft. McGonagall thinks that he should be a Healer or a Magizooligist but all that Annika wants to do is savour the beauty of the world and mark some of it down in a medium that he might be able to understand. 

“I’ve seen you draw during History of Magic,” Noranda said. 

Lily. “So it’s a truth, then.” 

And then Annika hates himself for backing himself into this corner. He never meant to tell anyone, definitely not like this. His parents and siblings would hate him and who knows how his friends would react? He’d never make a pass at any of them, he might be a boy but he doesn’t like girls that way, but they’d probably hate him and shun him and then he’d have nowhere to go, even within the magical world. 

(Annika was 12 when Narcissa Black, the seventh-year Slytherin prefect, caught him cutting his hair. It wouldn’t have been so bad except he was in the abandoned Men’s room on the third floor, the one that no one used because the ghosts liked flocking there and jumping out at you and that you couldn’t find a lot of the time anyway. Narcissa was on patrol and only made eye contact with him for a moment, but she put two and two together and understood. Annika scurred for the door, but Narcissa called him back. “You don’t have to be afraid.” Irritation flickered across her face. “I might hate you for being a Gryffindor, Fowler, but you have a right to know that at least us Purebloods are accepting enough to let you be who you are.” The stately, composed girl almost seemed hesitant. “There are spells for you. Drugs. Now—clean up that hair. Twenty points from Gryffindor for making that mess!”) 

“But you’re a girl,” Emmeline says, “so the God thing has to be a lie.” 

And then Alice looks at Annika pityingly and Annika hates himself for letting this happen and also hates Alice a bit for daring to pity him because dammit, he’s got this under control!

Lily, too, looks a bit bemused, as if she’s realized what’s going on. 

But then Alice steps in. “Alright. Lame. Boring. Next.” 

And Annika kind of wonders what could have been if they had all found out, but he’s mostly relieved as it moves on to the next (not girl, not woman, because he knows enough not to make that assumption) person. 

**IV. Emmeline Vance—Still Demanding to be Called by her Full First Name Despite How Long It Is**

Emmeline Vance honestly doesn’t like the taste of beer. 

That said, it lets her unwind for a few hours at least, so she drinks it. Maybe that makes it an addiction but she’s strong about it and isn’t going to let it take her over because she’s Emmeline. “Is it my turn, then?” 

“Did you not figure that out, Vance?” Alice asks, and damn, does Emmeline hate that girl sometimes. There’s just something about her that rubs Emmeline the wrong way. 

“Fine, then,” Emmeline says. She closes her eyes, thinking. “Let’s see, then.” Emmeline refuses to say ‘um’ because she’s decisive, dammit! and she doesn’t want anyone thinking that she has to use filler words. “I want to play Quidditch. I saw Aurora kissing Peter in the Transfiguration corridor during dinner a few weeks ago. And let’s see...sometimes I go up to the Astronomy tower. And I look down at the ground...and I wonder if I should just take the step.” 

Annika, bless her, looks vaguely uncomfortable but she goes somewhere every few months and comes back with her hair looking chopped and messy. Noranda, too, looks slightly worried but she can’t talk because she gets Howlers from her mum and dad every other week about things she broke at home that they’re only now discovering or about something she did wrong and Noranda cries about it when she thinks no one is looking. Lily has her stupid motherly look on, the Head Girl expression that makes you realize that she’s probably going to tell McGonagall about it soon and Emmeline grins at her showing all of her teeth because Lily never quite got over Severus Snape calling her a Mudblood and that was years ago and only Emmeline can see that maybe James wasn’t right for her after all. 

Only Alice still looks normal, and Emmeline almost hates how okay with it she seems. Alice always did seem the type to do crazy stuff but Emmeline would have noticed if she was really hurting herself. Alice and Emmeline lock eyes and Emmeline hates the girl with the short dark hair and almost black eyes, but then Emmeline flips her chestnut hair over her shoulder and gives the girl a half-smile, widening her deep green eyes, as if to say, ‘I’m prettier than you and I snogged Frank anyway so ha ha.' Actually, that’s exactly what she’s trying to say. 

Finally, Noranda decides to change the subject. “Aurora Sinistra? With Peter Pettigrew? Our Peter?” Because Peter is a seventh-year Gryffindor and Aurora is a sixth-year Ravenclaw who’ll be at Hogwarts for another year while Peter graduates, unless Peter has to retake the N.E.W.T.s, which is honestly pretty likely. 

“So?” Alice says, almost innocently.

“So? It’s a lie, isn’t it?” 

Alice gives a girlish giggle, and Emmeline wonders through a hazy mind just how drunk she is. “That nasty rumor? The one that she’s a lesbian?” 

“Well…” 

“You can’t believe everything you hear, Randa.”

“So you think it’s true?” 

“Obviously not. I mean,” Alice gives Emmeline a calculated glance. “Why would she kiss Peter?” 

“Peter is a nice boy,” Lily interrupts. 

“Exactly. Why a boy when she could have a man? Or a woman, for that matter.” 

“Is no one going to give this whole Quidditch thing a once-over?” Annika says. All heads turn to her. “I mean, no offense, Emmeline, but...you’re not…” Annika goes red and shuts her mouth. 

Alice picks up where she left off. “You’re not exactly an ideal Quidditch player.” 

“Are you saying that I’m not good enough?” 

“Actually—yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. You’re kind of a horrible player, Em.” 

Emmeline bristles. “Maybe I’m not good enough for the Gryffindor team, but I’m a good player! I’m fast! I don’t feel pain! And don’t call me Em!” 

“No one ever said she could,” Noranda says. “But she wants to.”

Emmeline glares at her. She hates all of the girls in her tower now. Maybe she’s not good enough, but they don’t have to spit on her dream! Emmeline can’t see herself working some boring desk job. She needs something with excitement, something where the adrenaline rushes through her like it does at the top of the Astronomy tower. A dragon trainer, maybe, or a banshee hunter. But Quidditch—that would be the best, wouldn’t it? A place where she could feel free, up in the air. With everyone watching, and waiting for her to do her best. Her parents, maybe, watching too, finally forced to admit that their daughter did a little something with her life and that she excelled at it, that she was beautiful, that she was a true Vance who added a little something of her own to the family name. 

“You wanna be an Auror like your Auntie Alice, don’t you?” Alice asks Emmeline, leaning slightly towards her so that Emmeline—but Emmeline won’t think like that, no matter how much Alice tries to make her. 

“Oh, Al, you know how much I love you,” Emmeline snaps. “But the very thought of being in the same room as you for another seven years makes me want to take off my own head with a Cutting Curse.” 

“Which leaves the...Astronomy tower one,” Lily says. “Emmeline...you can talk to us, you know…”

Alice shakes her head. “That’s a lie. I know a lie when I hear one.” And Emmeline’ll be damned if Lily and Annika both stiffen. But Emmeline can be a good loser, too, so she juts her chest slightly and looks at Alice through her lashes. “Alright then, Alice. But so can I.”

“Yes?” 

“I can tell that you’re lying about you and Frank.” 

The expression on Alice’s face is just too good to give up on. “I can tell that you don’t want the...open...thing that you have. You want him, and only him. You only make a pass at everything that moves to get back at him.” 

And then Alice launches herself at Emmeline and Emmeline can’t dive out of the way fast enough and they’re rolling on the ground and someone screams (Annika, probably, always her) and then Alice is yanked off of her. 

Lily is there with her arms around Alice, and then Noranda puts a hand on Emmeline’s shoulder. “No,” Lily says, and it shouldn’t, but for some reason it makes everything calm and tranquil for once. Alice grins then and shakes her head slightly. “You don’t think about jumping, Emmeline Vance. You think about what it would be like to fly. You watch the stars but you never, ever, think about ending it because I know you and you’re not like that.” 

Emmeline grins back, but it’s more like baring her teeth. “You got me there.” 

And then Noranda clears her throat. 

**V. Noranda Emori—ESFP**

Noranda clears her throat, because excuse her but she feels as though it’s her turn, dammit. “Shall we sit down, then?” she asks the four girls in front of her who’ve become like her sisters, with all of their fighting and undermining and closeness and loving; Lily with the red hair, green eyes, attitude like gingersnaps you don’t expect to be spicy until they are, Alice with the dark hair, dark eyes, thin frame like wires that bend around the rules, Annika with blonde hair, blue eyes, sweet words sometimes and nothing to say others, Emmeline with her brown hair and green eyes and her general hate of anything that’s better than her at something because she has an inherent need to feel superior. She thinks about them and she’s glad that her parents sent her all the way from Alberta, Canada to Hogwarts, UK because it means that she can’t go home over the breaks and because it means that she got to meet all of these beautiful women and got to see them grow. 

“I miss my family.” 

They take that in. 

“I love you all.” 

Annika grins but quickly wipes it off of her face. 

“Sometimes I wonder if I’m a wizard.” 

And surprisingly, Emmeline is the first one to respond. “You fucking arse,” she groans. “How can you think that?” 

And that breaks the spell. 

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Alice says. 

“You’ve done great magic,” Annika points out quietly. 

“You’re the best Herbologist that I’ve ever met,” Lily agrees. 

But Noranda can’t be sure from four simple sentences. She is the only halfblood in their small group of five and her parents fight all of the time and every summer she flies back to Lethbridge and sees all of her Muggle friends who don’t understand what’s happened to her, and her 14-year-old sister Karriana has no magic and hates Noranda and their younger brother Erian because of their magic. She is utterly confident but completely insecure and realistic but destructive and she is Noranda. 

And she’ll never be sure where she fits in to. And she probably won’t ever know if Hogwarts was the world for her. 

Emmeline. “So it’s true, then. But it shouldn’t be.” 

They shouldn’t, but the words sound empty and Noranda’s not sure if she will ever get over it. She probably won’t. But then again, maybe she’ll be a lawyer, or an Herbologist, or the first ever magical doctor solving Muggle problems with magic. Maybe she’ll cure cancer. Who knows? 

“You belong,” Annika promises. “We all do.” 

“You have to miss your family,” Alice adds. “I mean…” she trails off, and Noranda wonders if maybe Alice doesn’t have the same insecurities that hit them all sometimes. Noranda knows a bit about all of their families, really. She knows that Lily’s sister gave up on her, that Alice’s mother is dead, that Annika has two older brothers and younger twin siblings and a conservative family, that Emmeline’s older brother said goodbye to the Vance family a long time ago and hasn’t written in years. Noranda tries to remember what she knows about her own family and wonders what a family is. A family should love each other, right? 

Noranda simply can’t. 

She can’t love Father, who tries to push magic onto them all and is just so disappointed in Karriana for not having that special thing (and blames Mother for Karriana’s genes). She can’t love Mother, who should have left Father long ago and taken them with her but who’s just so scared of what Father can do that they live a happy home life together, forever. 

She tries to love Karriana but it’s been so long since her sister has looked at her without a glare or a scowl and Noranda knows that whatever they had there, frogs by the river and pressing their hands to a special lump on a particular tree, is gone. 

She tries to love Erian but it’s hard when he’s a ‘Puff and stays with his own House and when there’s just no time to talk to him, to see what his life is like now that he’s here and not there. 

She misses the father who used to swing her up on his shoulders and had a big laugh that could fill up the house. Noranda misses the mother who would play hide and seek with her and let her win every time. She misses fighting with Karriana over what to name the cat and misses arguing with Erian over who gets the shower first on hot summer days. 

She misses having a family.

But doesn’t she have one here?

“I love you all,” Noranda repeats, and it sounds so right. 

And the initial buzz of the alcohol has worn off and left the warmth behind, the simply happy warmth of having a family and finally being honest and it’s chased away the fear for a little while at least and Noranda isn’t crying, isn’t, isn’t, isnt’. 

Still, there’s no way that she’s ready to move on. 

**0\. The End**

When they woke up the next morning, they all had bad headaches. Alice and Noranda couldn’t stand having the lights on in their room. Emmeline had a feeling that something big happened the night before, but she couldn’t remember what it was. 

Noranda felt embarrassed that everyone had heard her cry. 

Alice felt as though she needed to talk to Frank, but she couldn’t remember what about. 

Annika wondered how she was going to go back and face her family, still feeling afraid and alone. 

Only Lily remembered what had happened the night before. 

She watched Emmeline and Alice arguing and wanted to cry because she knew that they could be good friends if they just tried. She saw Annika’s expression every day as her hair started to grow out and she went into the Ladies’ room and filled out career applications checking the female box. She listened to the Howler Noranda’s father sent her after she wrote to him writing that she was going to go to Cornell in the United States and change the way that the world looked at farming. 

She didn’t say anything to any of them. 

Lily knew her place in their lives. 

And then, suddenly, their time was up and they all went out onto the green and listened to speeches and then got the Hogwarts Express to themselves as they headed home a week before the rest of the school, never to return. News of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named came to them every week. James gripped her hand tightly as he met her family for the first time. (Petunia wasn’t there.)

Alice became an Auror (Lily remembered how she had admitted that she hadn’t wanted to do it in the first place and when the news came of her what—friend?—strangling a man with her bare hands because of some reason involving revenge she cried.) Noranda didn’t stay in touch with any of them. Lily didn’t know what happened to her, only that she was far across the ocean and probably safe. She considered visiting sometimes and wondered what had happened to the girl. Emmeline didn’t stay in touch either, but Lily heard stories sometimes and almost felt comforted knowing that her friend was still alive, still out there. Annika seemed to have dropped off the map and Lily wondered what had happened to him or her, whichever Annika felt that they were, and found herself wondering if the whole night had been a dream. Sometimes she felt like she had caught a glimpse of one of them in a shop window or across the street and feel tempted to cross. 

She never did. 

Lily Potter, nee Evans, took the thing she had heard that night to the grave.  
X  
X  
X

Adam Fowler held his boyfriend’s hand as he walked through the graveyard in Godric’s Hollow. They had passed the stone reading Emmeline Vance—“It is not too much of a sacrifice to sacrifice for a world worth living in.” Adam wondered if Emmeline had actually said it or if it had been stolen from someone else’s lips. Finally, he found the stone he had been looking for. James Potter. Lily Potter. 

The second war was over, and Adam knew of what his former acquaintance had done. It was strange to think of Lily purely as the mother of the wizarding world’s hero rather than as her own person. She had always been so independent. 

“Are you alright?” Daniel asked him. 

Adam gave a brief smile. “I think that I am.” 

Together, they left the graveyard.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: I think that the relationships that come from sharing a room for seven years at Hogwarts are incredibly strange, unique ones, and I only hope that I was able to capture some of them. Thanks for reading!


End file.
